


Paper Cranes

by The_Fictionist



Series: AU Twists [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-04 00:56:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1761193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Fictionist/pseuds/The_Fictionist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry and Tom save each other in a thousand different ways. Except, when they don't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paper Cranes

Bloodied faces, and bruises. Teeth gleaming in the burnt orange of the street lamp, knuckles cracked.

"Alright?" Potter panted, leaning over his knees to get his breath back as the Orphanage boys scarpered. Tom's chin jutted up, and he drew his shoulders back haughtily. His heart was hammering in his chest, as he tried not to stare wide-eyed at the other boy who'd...

"I didn't need your help, you know. I could have dealt with them."

* * *

 

_Groaning in the mud, head spinning stars and everything clouded from the attentions of Dudley and his friends- when a hand waved in his line of vision. Its owner wasn't looking at him, and Harry blinked at the pale fingers outstretched towards him. His body ached all over, and everyone had gone silent around them._

" _Oh for god's sake," Riddle muttered, leaning down and hauling him up by the rumpled front of his shirt. "It just ruins the fun of it if I have to see you lying there all crushed and pathetic. It wasn't for you."_

_Harry looked down and smothered a smile and wondered if this was what it was like to have a friend._

* * *

 

 

"They're idiots, you know," Harry said.   
  
They sprawled on the banks of the black lake, the first days of spring lightening the sky. The air had began to gain warmth enough that coats were no longer needed, and his hair looked almost as messy as Harry's did in the gentle breeze.

Tom's jaw tightened at the words.

"Most people are," he replied casually. He could feel green eyes boring into his face, with an uncharacteristic seriousness.

Slytherin and muggle raised was not the funnest of combinations either though.

Eleven years old, and he personally felt he could have been twice that at that moment in time.

Harry hummed, head tilting.

"Even me?" Harry raised his brows.

"Definitely you." He sniffed disdainfully. "You're the biggest idiot of them all, Potter."

Infuriatingly, Harry just laughed - and Tom couldn't do a damn thing to tear his gaze away.

* * *

 

_He could see his parents again. He had a family._

_Harry couldn't tear himself away from the gleaming mirror, from the familiar-not-familiar faces inside of it that he could look at only. His fingers pressed longingly against the glass, as his mother gave him a sad smile in response._

_He'd been coming to the room for two weeks now, ever since he first found it, sitting so close that his breath fogged up patches of the mirror._

_He didn't care, and the hardest part was tearing himself away as the hours slipped by. Tom told him not to be so obsessed by the whole thing, but obviously Tom just didn't understand._

_He'd settled comfortably on the floor again now, invisibility cloak draped around his shoulders for a discreet warmth._

_The moment after that, a crack had appeared in the surface of his father's face - splintering out. He whipped around, eyes flashing, just as Tom threw something else at the glass, watching emotionlessly as it shattered to the floor around them._

_Indignation swelled in Harry's chest. He surged to his feet, fists clenched._

" _It's only showing you what you want," Tom said coldly. His fellow first year strode over, slapping his cheek hard when he opened his mouth to spew venom and fury. Harry's eyes widened. "It's useless to get lost in such things." For the first time, Tom glared right back at him, instead of looking at him in that remote, considering but ultimately clinical and reptilian way of his. "If you want something, go out and find a way to get it."_

 _Harry's mouth ran dry._ " _My family are dead."_

" _So are mine. Make a new one."_

_Harry wondered, not for the first time, what Tom had seen in the mirror of erised._

* * *

 

 

Tom's chest tightened with a frozen, alien, terror as he stared at the approaching Dementors. His wand rested slack in his hands as the shadow crept over his mind like an icy fog.

He knew he should run, do something at least, but his limbs felt rooted to the spot. His knees felt terribly weak, and maybe he loathed that most of all.

The next second, a hand slipped tightly into his and there was a blazing light. So bright that it was blinding, that it hurt for a boy like him to look at so pure a thing as that. He'd never been able to cast the spell himself.

He wanted to recoil, from the weaponized happiness, the peace of the patronus that enveloped him like a warm bath. It chased away the chill, the monsters, and made him feel like he was wrapped up in the type of boy who  _could_ cast a thing like that. Breathtakingly powerful, defensive and radiant and-

"Don't just stand there!" Harry hissed in his ear, wand unshaking in his hand - patronus pouring out of him. He wanted to lean into it too, steal a little of Harry's light and happiness because the devil knew he had none otherwise, soak up into the closest thing to- "Run!"

And his legs started working again.

* * *

 

" _Harry - Harry!" the voice called._

_Harry cried out in the still dorm room, writhing in the sheets, the memories and dreams tearing through his mind._

_Inescapable, unavoidable, leaving him trembling all over. He felt like he was going to be sick. Like he was being swallowed up by darkness - and not Tom's type of darkness either._

_The next second, hands pinned his flailing wrists to the bed, wrenching him straight out the nightmares with a violent shake. For a moment, they lingered hazy. Scarlet eyes, a woman screaming, all the normal things that smeared exhaustion across his features like a bruise._

_He stared up at Tom, as the other boy hovered over him. His breath caught and choked somewhere in his throat._

" _Tom," he gasped. Even when he stopped thrashing, the fingers remained closed around his wrist, devouring each erratic beat of his pulse. Harry swallowed._  
  
Clever eyes studied him, seeming to sear straight through skin and sinew to examine all the dark bits of himself that he tucked away so that nobody ever had to see them. 

_"I'm fine," Harry managed._ _He squeezed his eyes shut._

_Tom nodded and disappeared back to his own bed._

_He was back the night after, and then the one after that until Harry no longer woke up with dead names souring his mouth, and fell asleep instead to the young Dark Lord's quiet warm presence next to him on the mattress._

_Of course, Tom said it was only so that he wouldn't be woken up by Harry's incessant nightly racket, but...well, a silencing charm could have done that too._

_And his insides flipped for an entirely different reason that time as he burrowed closer._

 

* * *

 

 

"Well, make a wish, then." Harry made an impatient gesture of his hands.

The cake was a rich chocolate, painstakingly iced and decorated with all the candles for his age. They flickered gently in the evening light, casting gold over the empty classroom.

Tom's gut lurched. "...you made me a birthday cake."

"Yeah," Harry said, as if that was nothing. "So blow out the candles already. If you let the wax melt onto the frosting, birthday or not, I'll bloody well kill you."

Nobody had ever bothered to make him a birthday cake before.

* * *

 

" _Well, what do you want to do?" Tom asked, lazily, yawning. Harry's mind shortcuited slightly as he considered the question. Tom's brow pinched in the beginnings of a frown. "What?"_

" _Nobody's - I mean -" Nobody had ever asked him that. They always had expectations for his path in life, assumptions for what he would be doing, and claims of what it was that he wanted without ever actually asking._

_He was the Boy Who Lived. His life was set._

_Tom's head tilted, gaze sharpening in increased scrutiny. Finally, however, the Slytherin just shook his head._

" _You're an idiot, Potter."_

_And yet, with Tom looking at him like that - he felt like he could do anything._

* * *

 

 

"Don't do this," Harry said, gripping his wrist.

"I didn't tell you to come," Tom snapped. His father stared back, quivering pasty-faced and pathetic. Tom's grip tightened even further on his wand, the fatal words on the tip of his tongue.

The hatred growing forever, reaching a boiling point in his chest, until he felt he could explode for the need to hurt. To pay back some of the pain and to get rid of it all, until he could feel comfortably nothing all over again.

So maybe he wouldn't have the question of why he was never good enough circling his head like a vulture. Looking at this man, this traitor, he didn't want to be Tom Riddle anymore.

He didn't want  _his_ name, and he didn't want to be remembered and carried as the shame of the family. He was sick of being nobody, when he could be the greatest of all of them.

"Killing your father won't help," Harry whispered, eyes fixed upon him, intent. "You know it won't. It will just make it worse. Change you."

"Please," his father began, seemingly deciding that maybe he could try again, with an ally so seemingly on his side.

"Maybe I want to be changed."

Harry balked, where he'd stepped in front of him; a tiny wall of conscience and moral integrity. His friend swallowed hard, lips pressing thin.

Tom raised his wand in determination, waiting for Harry to step aside. Willing him to step aside.

"Then do it for yourself," Harry said eventually. "Don't do it for him. He's not worth it."

Green light flashed, but it wasn't the same as it was before.

* * *

 

" _No!" The scream tore out of Harry's throat before he could stop himself. He lunged forwards, after Sirius, feeling like there was something putrid congealing in his blood. It chilled him to the bone and - when warm arms wrapped tight around him - it blazed everything to fire._

_He snarled, eyes wild, kicking and scratching and something exploding inside of him._

" _Get off me - I can save him - I can still save him-"_

_His godfather slipped peacefully into the veil, as if it was a dream, and Tom grunted as Harry's elbow smashed into his ribs._

" _You can't," the bastard hissed in his ear, nails raking in. "He's gone."_

" _-Let go of me!"_

" _Don't be such a fool!"_

_They grappled, him managing a few steps forward, only to be dragged back again by the waist or the throat until they were tussling ungracefully on the floor, with limbs sore and magic crackling._

_Fingers clenched painfully tight into his hair. The arms holding him weren't a comfort, they were a deliberate restraint and cage and Harry kept hitting again and again but it did no good._

" _I hate you," Harry gasped, struggling to breathe. "I could have - just get off - I hate you - don't - don't-" his head pounded. Every bit of him ached._

_Tom's chin tucked atop his head, wand digging into his side._

 

* * *

 

 

Tom didn't care that Sirius Black was gone.

The mutt meant nothing to him, in comparison to the livid boy in his hold who had - through some dreadful fate or circumstance - come to mean everything. He still didn't know how that had happened.

But it was easy to guess what happened next, considering the fading battlefield around them. A sharp pain flared in his side, from a throwaway curse and blood welled hot and sticky.

For a few moments, as he pulled a hand back in a really illogical surprise, he couldn't think at all.

Harry's attention snapped away from the veil, and onto him in seconds.

A thousand different ways that they saved each other, and for the first time he wondered how it would be if they didn't.

He wondered, if he had been the one to tumble into the veil of death, if Harry could scream and sob and rage - desperate to do anything to follow, to make the clock tick back just enough.

He blinked, sluggishly.

He found out later, engulfed in the white of the hospital wing, that Harry had carried him all the way to medical help - damn anyone who got in his way. And, when he woke up, ribs still throbbing with a new scar for his collection, the boy was white as sheet, having passed out in exhaustion from sitting at his bedside.

A ridiculous sentiment, that. Utterly pointless gesture.

He stroked his fingers through dark locks, and the tanned nape of neck that was bound to have a crick by the time Harry roused again. He watched him breathe, watched the eyes still suspiciously red-rimmed from tears.

Decided, then are there, that no matter what happened, he was never going to let Harry go.

* * *

 

_Harry's knees tucked firmly to his chest, as if to somehow make himself as small as possible._

_His fists clenched bone-white, and he'd closed his eyes. He didn't know how long he stayed hunched there, all the memories of his late Godfather spinning around in his head._

_He wasn't aware of anyone coming or going, though he knew many of the other funeral goers came over often enough to offer their condolences. The words washed numbly over his head, registering only to slip away a second later._

_In the end, he'd disappeared, just so he didn't have to hear meaningless words of sympathy and comfort when none of that brought Sirius back._

_It took him an inordinately long time to realize that someone was leaning against the gravestone opposite, and his eyes flickered with some signs of life for the first time that night._

_He considered commenting, on how Tom disliked funerals, and had disliked Sirius even more, on how it was disrespectful for the teenager to be lounging against somebody's final resting place as if he didn't have a care in the world. He didn't have the energy. He hadn't spoken to the other boy in days after he'd been released from the hospital, and didn't know where to start now._

_So they continued to sit there in silence, Tom not saying anything even as the sky grew dark around him. Harry's throat thickened._

_Tom fell just as quietly into step with him, when he finally left._

* * *

 

 

He turned away from Lord Voldemort, because maybe being Tom Riddle could still be worth something after all.

* * *

 

_Harry watched Ginny Weasley kissing somebody else, and his stomach plummeted right out and onto the floor._

_His lips and palms tingled as he forced his gaze away. Just like he always did. Tom shoved a drink into his hand, those eyes watching him as they always did._

_He felt something else, infinitely confusing tangle in his veins - so different and frighteningly electric in comparison to the comfortable, safe-painful want when he looked at Ginny. Ginny with soft skin, and a wicked sense of humour, and hair that gleamed like the setting sun. Ginny was another life entirely, with the markers neatly placed between the bursts of excitement and the normal firework ups and downs._

_Tom was hard lines, and something distinctly else. He was the edge of an abyss, and the urge one got to jump off the edge of it all. He was a force of nature, cruel and untamed._

_His lips were soft, fingers firm against his hip._

_Breath caressed hot against the shell of his ear._

" _Always such an idiot, Harry."_

_He kissed back with ferocity._

* * *

 

 

Life second-hand, with a bargain sticker slapped on the front like all the broken toys that nobody wanted.

Orphaned child, by choice instead of tragic circumstance. Sovereign of Slytherin, but disconnected by the webs of their fearful respect and his own superiority.

Tom made himself indispensable, impossible to reject in the force of his powers. Invisible no more, clawing up the ranks of the world until he'd carved himself upon it.

Yet, when fingers curled around his own so innocently, and eager lips worshipped him with an astounding sincerity of want…

For a while none of it mattered at all.

* * *

 

_The wall slammed hard against his back, but Harry merely stared back coolly at the men in front of him._

_Slowly, a smile crossed his lips, eyes gleaming wicked-bright with a terrible amusement. He knocked the attempting-to-be-threatening hand off._

" _Do you really think you're the first one to think of this?" he laughed, low and dangerous and their political enemies were finally smart enough to look scared. To take a step back as he straightened out the creases in his jacket. "You think you're the first to try and use me against him?"_

_His wand dropped smoothly into the palm of his hand, as he stalked forward after them._

" _Everyone knows that the only way to get at Tom Riddle is to get Harry Potter," one of the stupider ones said. Harry grinned even wilder back, teeth more bared than anything._

 

" _And have they?" he asked, sweetly. "If this is such common knowledge, has anyone managed to get at Tom Riddle?"_

_The curses slipped out, blindingly fast, the battle over before it had barely begun despite the uneven numbers. He stepped down on the leader's throat._

_Anyone who wanted to hurt Tom had to go through him, and wasn't that rather the point why the blooming politician had a reputation for invulnerability in the first place? Because no one ever managed to get past._

_Tom never even knew._

_It was just business as usual._

* * *

 

 

They were rising figures in the Wizarding World, renowned for their policies for change.

Harry worked on the social improvements, for equal rights for magical creatures and to tear down the old prejudices. He ran magical orphanages, acted benefactor and organized summer camps for students and kids who need a place in the holidays.

He channeled the remnants of the Potter fortune into being able to offer Wolfsbane Potion to werewolves to free, and a large grounds for freedom without accident on the full moon. He opened up blood banks, and spearheaded charities to the effect of a soldier in battle.

Tom was politician-and-lawyer. He obliterated his opponents in court, wrote up and campaigned new laws to support Harry's ideologies, and made allowances for magical purity in the world. Magical pride.

He wrote up Education Bills, and the integration of Light and Dark arts inside Hogwarts school.

Nothing could stop them.

Though there were plenty who tried.

His expression had gone blank as he looked at the cut on Harry's cheeks. His hand remained perfectly steady as he calmly wiped away a drop of blood, smoothing over otherwise flawless skin.

"Oh, you probably shouldn't have done that," he hummed.

They didn't stand a chance as the terrorist bastards fell to the ground screaming.

It was a symphony in his ears, but the sound of Harry's heartbeat was even better.

* * *

 

_Tom Riddle was supposed to live forever. Harry could never have imagined anything but - and he certainly never imagined this._

_His head, and the beautiful, gloriously twisted brain inside it was shattered and smeared across the floor with a devastatingly finality._

_Everyone in the surrounding area had fallen in the explosion of Harry's power, but it was too late and all he could do was cradle a broken body to his chest._

" _Okay, just hold on." He didn't recognize his own voice. "You're going to be okay, Tom. The medics are already on their-"_

" _Harry," Tom interrupted, giving him that look. He looked very small of a sudden, and Tom was many things but small had never been one of them. Blood dribbled out the corner of his mind. "Don't be an idiot."_

_He couldn't breathe. Couldn't think straight, as if it was him who had smashed on the ground in pieces. Each sound Tom made sounded raw and strained, too loud, chest rising and falling quickly._

_He tightened his grip, as if the heat of him could stop Tom from fading cold._

" _I'm always an idiot." His voice wobbled, and normally Tom would have called him out for being pathetic. "I'm sorry."_

_What was the point of him, if he couldn't save the man he loved?_

_Apologies weren't enough. They couldn't be. He started casting healing spells, anything that he could think of that might work. None of it worked. The curse was too strong, the body worn past breaking point and-_

_Tom's fingers slackened, his head lolling in Harry's arms._

_The look in his eyes was a manic terror he hadn't seen since the Dementors._

" _Don't want to die. Was never on the plan," Tom mumbled._

" _I'm not going to let you die. And you're not going to let go, you promised you'd never let me go."_

_The look that Tom gave him was so quintessentially Tom, withering, that it only hurt more. Tom was already dying, mere words weren't going to save that and Harry had always been better at fighting than healing. He choked on his snort. It was an awful, wretched sound._

_Tom was dying, and there wasn't a thing he could do to stop it, or he would have already done so._

_People crowded around them, but he had no attention to waste on them. His fingers clenched into Tom's blood-matted hair, lips pressed trembling to his forehead._

" _Please don't." He wasn't in the habit of begging, and he hoped Tom at least got some satisfaction to hear him do it now. "Don't leave me. I love -" all the things they'd never said, because such things were sentimental and Tom despised all that. Said it in a thousand different actions instead. "I love you."_

_But when he looked down, Tom's eyes were already vacant._

_He didn't have enough left in him to cry._

* * *

 

 

The worst part was that he wasn't there.

He heard about the accident - and how could it be a trivial accident out of all things? He heard about it later, after being irritated at Harry for being late to their meeting.

His ears rung, as he stared at the bearer of bad news. Nothing made sense, and he could see the messenger's mouth moving, but he couldn't understand a word.

Because Harry was dead, and it had to be some kind of joke.

He didn't kill the woman who told him. He was too far gone for it to even occur, and he didn't notice when she left. He just drifted to the place where they were storing the body.

Harry looked more peaceful in death, than he'd ever done awake or in sleep.

It was utterly hateful.

He brushed hair back from Harry's forehead, hands trembling for the first time in his life.

He'd always thought, if Harry was somehow to die for any reason, that it would be under his hand.

It wouldn't be a muggle car accident, where the miserable fucker didn't even stop as Harry bled out onto the side of the road.

He wasn't quite aware when he hit his knees, but he was sure he was making a spectacle of himself. He didn't care.

Harry was too still. He was never this still.

And still Tom couldn't get a single word out.

* * *

 

" _You know, there's this Japanese Legend," Harry said, as they sprawled in bed on one rare peaceful morning. "Where if you make a thousand paper cranes, you get a wish."_

" _Sounds ridiculous," Tom scoffed. He was far more concerned with trailing his lips along Harry's neck, and watching him try not to squirm for the third time that hour. "Unless it was imbued in incantations, such a thing would have no magical properties."_

" _I think it's nice," Harry murmured, hand pressing into his back._

" _You would."_

_He soon had his partner distracted from such idle fantasies._

* * *

 

 

They were lined up, all different coloured, a year later. Not for any reason, but just because Harry started making a paper crane each time all his other methods failed.

The house would have been too empty without them, littering up every surface.

He'd resorted to dark magic, to resurrection stones and all manner of other things. It never did any good. It was just shadows and shades, pale imitations that drove him mad with yearning.

He closed his eyes.

* * *

 

_I wish you were still here._


End file.
